One teen's desperate bid to reach North Jersey from Guatemala

A Hudson County man is hoping to be reunited with his 13-year-old daughter, who was detained crossing the border.

Thirteen-year-old Elizita was determined for months to make the journey of more than 2,000 miles from Guatemala to the United States to be with her father in North Jersey.

“I had told her, ‘No, I don’t want you to come here,’ ” her father, F. Toj, recalled on Sunday as he sat at his kitchen table in a walk-up apartment in Hudson County.

But the daughter he calls Elizita as a term of endearment became part of the wave of tens of thousands of unaccompanied children from Central America entering the country illegally, creating a humanitarian crisis at the nation’s southern border.

“I never wanted to bring my family because that path is hard,” said Toj, who spoke on the condition that he be identified by his maternal grandmother’s last name because he is here illegally.

Toj, who entered the country more than four years ago, making the trek from the Department of Chimaltenango in Guatemala to Arizona, said he experienced thirst and hunger and walked past dead bodies and skeletal remains on his journey.

But last month, a day before Elizita’s 16-year-old male cousin was scheduled to make the dangerous, nearly three-week trip to the United States with professional smugglers, she persuaded her parents to let her go, too.

“She kept saying, ‘I have to go, I have to go,’ ” said Toj, whose account was corroborated by his wife in Guatemala and a social service agency that is helping him here. “And then I thought, there must be a reason for her to want to come. … I told her, ‘If that’s your decision, then OK.’ ”

So Toj and his wife agreed to pay the smugglers 45,000 quetzales — more than $5,700 — to help their daughter get to the
United States, he said.

She left her home, which she shared with her mother, Martha, and five siblings with only a few belongings. In two weeks, Elizita and her cousin made it across the Guatemala border, through Mexico and then crossed the Rio Grande into Texas. A few days later, on June 29, they were detained by U.S. immigration officials.

Her father received the phone call.

Federal authorities, who got his number from his daughter, told him that she had been detained and was being transferred to a facility in Arizona, where she is now. A few days later, they called back to tell him his nephew had been stopped, too.

“I’m still nervous, because I don’t have her in my sight,” Toj, who works in a factory in Bergen County, said in a two-hour interview Sunday. “When that day comes, I will be full of happiness, but right now I feel sad and worried.”

More than 57,500 unaccompanied migrant children have crossed the southwest border illegally from October 2013 through June 2014 and been apprehended by authorities, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Those rising numbers have stirred debate among lawmakers, advocates and opponents of immigration across the nation about what the country should do to address the influx of children caught at the border.

This month, President Obama asked Congress for $3.7 billion in emergency money to help deal with the crisis.

Of the children apprehended from January through July 7 of this year, 1,504 have been placed in New Jersey with guardians or sponsors, according to figures released last week by the Department of Health and Human Services. Texas, California, Florida, Maryland, New York and Virginia have received more placements than New Jersey, according to the data.

Sally Pillay, program director for First Friends of New York and New Jersey, a non-profit that sends volunteers to visit detainees at federal and county facilities, including the Bergen County Jail, said her agency has received a few requests to help detained minors who have no family here, and she expects their numbers in New Jersey to climb.

“I think it’s going to grow because I feel that more people are coming forward to help provide sponsorship,” Pillay said.

Her organization is helping Toj in his efforts to reunite with his daughter and is seeking sponsors for two 17-year-old unaccompanied minors, one being held at the Union County Juvenile Detention Center and another who has a 2-year-old child and is being held at The Children’s Village in New York.

“A lot of people are asking how can they get involved,” she said.

Gayle Kesselman, co-chairwoman of New Jersey Citizens for Immigration Control, said the placement of unaccompanied immigrant children in the state will only encourage more to come. Federal officials need to find a way to send the children back to their homelands in an efficient and humane manner, and to also militarize the U.S. borders, she said.

“It’s just a matter of time when we will be completely overwhelmed by not tens of thousands but maybe millions or tens of millions of people coming to our country illegally,” Kesselman said. “Who will stop them? Nobody.”

Many of the children arriving in the United States have come from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to avoid poverty and growing gang violence, or to join their parents who migrated years ago.

Toj, who crossed the border in April 2010, said he believes that his daughter insisted on leaving her home because she felt unsafe. In a telephone interview Sunday, Elizita’s mother, Martha, said that since November her daughter had complained about being threatened at school, perhaps by girls involved in drug activity, and sometimes the teenager would come home in tears.

“We would cry together,’’ she said, adding that she had conferences with her daughter’s teacher, who offered to help. But nothing changed.

In February, Elizita went missing for two days and one night, her parents recalled. Her disappearance led community members and a local radio station to ask the public for help in locating the girl, described in Facebook posts at the time as wearing a white-and-red shirt with an orange sweater.

Toj found out that his daughter was missing when he looked at his social media account one day after work. He immediately called his wife, and thought about returning home.